I'm stranded on an island!!

And by stranded I mean please don't come help me!

I'm heading to my family cottage on Lake Nipissing for the first time in 2 years. While I will have cell phone service, thus some connection to the internet, I really don't plan on using it except to show off pictures and videos of my time there.

I'm also going to attempt to read a book on basic HTML coding on the beach. This will either go great and the surroundings will make it that much more possible for me to comprehend it, or it will go horribly as I won't have a computer to try things out on and I will simply need to re-read the book when I get home. I'll keep you posted.

Otherwise, I also plan to spend time with family as two sets of aunts and uncles, my grandmother, and the many family friends we've made over the decades of vacationing at the same spot are all on the island as well.

Keep an eye on my Instagram account and my Viddy account (username cinn48 on both) to follow all the fun I'm having, along with the occasional tweet letting people know who won cribbage, or horseshoes that afternoon.

I will never sell you snake oil!

Lately my schedule has been wacky crazy, and so has Nick's (TMISW). So, to help find time to spend together, we've started combining work and quality time. We now have a rule that every time we sit down for a meal together Nick will ask me about social media and I will answer his questions. Yes, we've basically become client and consultant, but I promised I wouldn't charge him my full rate ;-)

So, yesterday's question of the day was "Okay, so now there's Pinterest, and Tumblr, and Google+, why should I be on all of these?" And my answer was simple "You shouldn't be".

I am on all of them, and so many more (check out the incomplete list here) but I don't suggest anybody try to be everywhere.

First you need to decide what message you are trying to send, what results you want and who your market is. Then you talk to someone like me to discover which networks are where your clients are and how you should be talking to them there.

Second, even if you decide you need to be in 3 or 4 or even 5 places you should only do a couple of them at a time. Start with one or two and master it, then move on to the rest. It takes roughly 21 days to form a habit, so commit fully to one network at a time for 3 weeks until it stops being work, and becomes second nature, then move on to the next network. If there is any other marketing that gets results in less than 3 weeks please share it with me. I'll buy immediately.

After having this conversation with TMISW, in which he gave me exactly 60 seconds to respond, I listened to an old episode of Marketing Over Coffee which basically says the same thing. This is definitely my favourite marketing podcast I've found. I've been going back a few months and listening to some older episodes. Loved hearing them talk about the exact 1 minute speech I gave last night.

Don't create another internet marketing graveyard! You don't need to be everywhere, but you do need to be where your customers are and you need to be present.

John and Chris quickly moved

right on to the Snake Oil salesmen of internet marketing. You know, the ones who charge you a ridiculous amount to set up your pages and post a certain number of posts a week. I never recommend hiring someone to do the job for you, unless it's a community manager who actually works in your company. There is nothing wrong with wanting a little extra help while you get going until it becomes a habit, but you are the best representative of your company. You have the knowledge, the passion, the personality. Nobody can duplicate that on your behalf. Please don't think using social media is some specialized skill that only some can master. You can do it, I promise.

How To Make A Viral Video*

Turns out I have close personal ties with someone who has the secret on how to make a video go viral. Also turns out I have close personal ties with someone who gets to spend two nights watching Marvel superhero movies and call it work.

The man I sleep with (see first footnote here) was asked to make a fan trailer for the new Avengers movie coming out on May 4th. And in that moment the balance of who had the cooler job switched. So he spent some time and cut up a 2.5 minute trailer that I really enjoy.

And it turns out a lot of other people really enjoy it too! As of today, 3 days after it's been posted, it's received almost 10,000 views. Granted that's not huge, but just imagine if 10,000 people paid attention to what you were doing. That's roughly 100 times the people that would ever give a crap about you.

I've learned two key points here, on making a video that goes viral.

#1 Partner with someone who has already laid the groundwork. Screen Rant is an online film news site that has been around for 9 years. That's roughly how long it takes to become an overnight success. Screen Rant has a heavily trafficked site with lots of committed fans who comment and share their content everywhere. By having that committed group of people watching the trailer and sharing it that multiplied the number of views significantly.

#2 Don't be afraid to be bold or controversial. Reading through the comments on either the original Screen Rant post, or the actual YouTube video you will see a general trend to either hate or love the music. There are next to no comments on the actual content of the video itself, save some quick comments like "Loved it!", "Best. Trailer. Everywhere." The longest and most well written comments are on how the music either did not fit the trailer or was epic.

*these are not guaranteed to help your video go viral, but really they can't hurt right?

Short notes on things I've noticed lately...

Nick and I recorded an episode of Limited Release late Saturday night. Nick uploaded it overnight so there it was Sunday morning when I turned on my iTunes. We had thought about changing release days to Friday and I want to try that before deciding, but releasing on Saturday sure has been amazing! I noticed this morning that there have been almost as many downloads of that episode as there have been all month of the last episode we released. It seems lots of people sit down and open iTunes on Sunday. We haven't even written a blog post, or announced that the episode is available yet.

What I've learned from this... paying attention to numbers and checking regularly can give you interesting information and change the way you've been doing things.

Pinterest is the next new exciting social network. Seems everyone is pinning things obsessively. I have my own Pinterest account which I use sporadically. However, the amount of engagement is high, very high. I'm constantly surprised by how often I pin things and they get re-pinned or liked, by complete strangers, people I am not connected with whatsoever.

Pinners seem to be really, really willing to share when they like the content. This could really work in people's favour if they can figure out how to make their message interesting and fun. I love that every pin on Pinterest comes with a link back to the site it was pinned from. It makes it so easy to share because as a Pinner I'm not worried that I won't credit the creator. It's so easy!

Of course, when I talk about engagement on Pinterest and the amount of liking and re-pinning of my posts, I admit that nothing more comes of this right now. Most of the re-pinners don't subsequently follow my boards, and I don't follow many of theirs either. So they aren't really engaging. Except for a nice feeling that people like me, I don't get much else from each individual pinner who shares my stuff. Yet.

What I've learned from this... Just because it's new and looks like a lot of other things out there don't discount it until you've tried it. Also, don't jump to conclusions, a re-pin, a re-tweet, a +1, a like don't really count for much unless it leads to conversation.

And one more thing... I'm going to start a new blogging project called How To Keep (or Lose) Your Man With Food. I

found this great pamphlet in a collection of old cookbooks that offers many man-pleasing recipes. I'm going to make each one for my man, and any other who is willing to eat the food and

rate it (I may have opened a door I will never be able to close there). I need to come up with a bit of a rating system, a rate of frequency and a platform to do this on.

Any ideas are very welcome.

My Top Ten Favourite Muppets

Sure, this blog is supposed to be more about working in social and digital medias, but The Muppets are a huge part of my life, so deal with it. Plus, the hype for the new movie has been fueled by an amazing online social media campaign, which I have gladly eaten up just like the child of the 80s that I am. And I just read this blog post from The Film Experience.

So, I present, my 10 favourite muppets. Counting down from 10.

10. Dr. Teeth - I'm not sure growing up that I could tell a difference between Dr. Teeth and Dr. John, but I loved them both!









9. Swedish Chef - the one character where a photo just doesn't do justice!


8. Scooter - might just be the most important guy working at Muppet Theatre, but you'd never know it.


7. Statler and Waldorf - this just may be the funniest picture ever!


















6. Janice - she hung out with the coolest cats
















5. Miss Piggy - now that's one strong independent woman!


4. Oscar the Grouch - the only one not yet ready for Primetime


3. Rowlf - The dog can play a mean piano!


2. Fozzie the Bear - the comedian is a bear!


1. Animal - You may not believe me, but I can identify with Animal's rage. I just want to yell and pound things too most of the time.



In closing... Gee it's good to be together again!

What is LunchUp Guelph?

I've spent this month trying to define Lunch Up Guelph to build our website. It hasn't gone well. How do you define something that created itself? How do you define something you never planned? It's really difficult to take this step of legitimizing what's been created here when I really feel like I had nothing to do with it.

At it's most basic #LunchUpGuelph is simply an empty canvas that the people who attend fill with their creativity. I, and my very helpful co something or others Rob Campbell and Sean Yo, spend some time each month choosing a venue, a menu, and doing some admin like keeping a list and printing name tags. We open the doors and the minds and let you have the conversation.

However, when I look at Lunch Up Guelph more closely I see real magic.

While helping therobcampbell out with the drive to Bring Q to Guelph I realized that the group of people we have brought together through Lunch Up is a truly powerful group of people. We have artists, scientists, and doctors. We have IT specialists, web developers, programmers and coders. We have students, we have teachers. We have business owners, professionals, holders of public office. Mortgage agents, realtors, financial advisers. I dare you to name a profession, hobby or expertise that we don't have covered.

If you want to gauge the pulse of the economic reality of Guelph, the artistic community of Guelph, the political values of Guelph, the wellness of our city, our home, these are the people to ask. And if you want to make a change in our city, these are the people to ask for help.

A community is as strong as it's members and ours is full of superheroes!

I created a social media monster!

If you know me at all you've probably heard me use this sentence to describe some of the people I've helped to understand how to use Twitter. And I've meant it every time. It turns out though that I had no idea what the definition of a monster was. This time I really did create a monster!

BrainyQuote defines a Monster as "Something of unnatural size, shape, or quality; a prodigy; an enormity; a marvel."

On Monday September 26th I sent a very innocent tweet out into the world, "#Guelph tweetup this week, lunch anyday. Whose in?"

I immediately received some responses from the usual suspects, Julie, Mark, Sharon, Bang, Rob, which felt like a success. Great, a nice lunch with some friends I haven't seen in the real world for awhile! That night however as we were deciding where to go our little lunch date turned into a massive outing requiring reservations, menu planning, nametags, a hashtag, a facebook page...

Some people say it's because I was the one who suggested lunch. That's very nice of them to think I'm so influential in Guelph that with one tweet I can round up 30+ people. The reality is that each of those 5 people who originally agreed to have lunch with me all have their own network of people too. I rounded up 5 people to hang out with, and then they each rounded up their own 5 or so people to hang out with.

And with that math equation, Lunch Up Guelph was born.

Our first lunch was at Artisanale. 33 people showed up each with donations of non-perishable food items for the Guelph Food Bank. In total we raised over 100lbs for them.



On top of that many of us met for the first time after spending months talking online. And even better was how many new people I met for the first time and then started following from that day.

Today is the day of our second lunch. We will be at The eBar this time around. This will be a test of what we've created. Will it be as fun, as dynamic, as community building as the first time? Will Lunch Up Guelph become something more than local people having lunch together? Judging by the activity this morning on the #lunchupguelph stream I think everyone else is as excited as I am!

Going back to the definition of monster, this monster is definitely a prodigy and a marvel. I may have started it with one tweet but the awesome people of this community have made it so much more than I anticipated. Almost everyday I marvel at the power of the people I've met through Twitter. They are truly #Guelphtastic!